All I want for Christmas is the use of a remote cabin, half way up a mountain.
Give me the key, show me the way, and I’ll see you in the New Year.
Meditation
Many years ago I remember reading an interview with a Western Buddhist monk. The monk was asked what he had got out of his years of meditation practice. I like the monk’s answer,
I know that I get angry.
Today I know that I was angry.
Sometimes I find that for no reason at all, or at least no reason that I can put my finger on, a song gives me a strong sense of empowerment.
This morning I was listening to a random playlist and the song Technicolor Beat by Oh Wonder came on. I was familiar with this song as I have played this playlist before, but I know no more of Oh Wonder’s music.
As I sat there listening, I brought up the lyrics on my phone and quietly sung along. I’m not sure that I was completely engaging with what the lyrics were saying. I could ’hear’ some of the meaning, but I was mainly being carried along by the tempo and beat of the song.
Technicolor Beat finished and I felt uplifted. Any feelings of being downbeat from earlier in the day were erased. Will that feeling stay with me? Probably not, at least as the song fades from my mind. For all of that though, I am pleased that some tunes can take me to that place. I believe that being able to tap into that place is only possible because such states of mind are valid, possible, and exist within us. Being reminded of them makes them a stronger part of me. After all, that is a part of what meditation is about. Reinforcing, familiarizing (what the Tibetan word for meditation, gom, means) ourselves with positive states of mind.
Process Zero and Music
Sunday, October 20, 2024
Process Zero is a feature of the iPhone camera app Halide. My understanding of Process Zero is that it removes the processing that Apple apply to the photos that iPhones take. The result of Process Zero has been described as more film like, unprocessed. This morning I sat in our living room drinking my coffee, reading the news. Occasionally I would look up and sit silently, looking out of the window at day’s emerging light.
Wednesday, September 18, 2024 →
I was driving home yesterday and found myself in a long line of traffic. I live not far off the Hana Highway here in Maui. This road turns into the Road to Hana, a journey which for very good reason, for its beauty and culture, attracts a lot of visitors each year. Morning time can find the road busier with cars heading out towards Hana, and evening can find the road busy with cars returning, the numbers varying as the holiday seasons come and go.
While moving slower than usual along the highway, locals turning off on the side roads as we headed east, I found myself wondering what this journey was like for those visitors who were driving the road for the first time? I regularly drive this section of road, I know what comes next, what there is to see, how long it will take to get from A to B. For visitors though, each turn in the road offers a new site, buildings and homes will be seen for the first time, what is around the next corner or over the next hill? Indeed even, in my complacency of knowing the road well, what do visitors see that I miss?
Well this is obviously a thought that has stuck with me for a long time. I initially wrote about it over four years ago, saying,
Sometimes when I am driving home, following a car containing a family or persons visiting Maui, I wonder how they are seeing the road and its surrounding scenery? For them, each bend in the road will be revealing a vista that they have not seen before. Views that for me I see pretty much every day, will be a first occurrence for them.
I guess that there is something in this dialogue that for me has some meaning? Perhaps it is around the subject and state of awareness? How present can I be to what is around me, even when what is around me is very familiar?
Those times when on hearing or seeing something I am triggered in a way that nudges something deep down inside me. That perception by the senses stirs something in me. It can be good or bad, or maybe in that moment I am unsure what the feeling is. But that something in me has been triggered is certain.
Such things don’t happen without a cause, and an investigation into that cause can be helpful. It can reveal a purpose as yet uncovered, an aspect of my personality as yet unknown, or some pain that needs healing.
And yet in that moment I am occupied with something else, distracted by the demands of others, or maybe adverse to wanting to explore what the cause of that trigger is. Then before I know it that feeling is forgotten about, subsumed under the activities of life. But it wont go away. It just lies dormant until a fresh trigger brings it back to the surface, returning the sensation back to consciousness and awareness.
I believe that we all have our safe spaces. Those places in our mind and body where we feel comfortable. Part of the practice for this life is, I believe, to stretch those boundaries. This is not a challenge, not “a who can stretch furthest?" dare. Rather it is path through life of seeing if I can grow larger my potential, in what I can embrace than what I might be doing now…a path that I can chose to take if I wish to, and one that I do so while caring for my own well being - not jumping further than I feel is safe to do so.
And then those times happen when I am caught completely off guard and find myself out of my comfort zone. In such times my safe boundaries just collapse, disappear from around me, and I am left standing naked and exposed with nowhere to run to. Whether other’s see that in me, I don’t know, but for me in that moment it is a very real feeling.
Such happened to me last night. People visited, new friends. We engaged in conversation, and the ground just opened up underneath me. Nowhere to run to. I could feel the discomfort in me, I felt exposed and I had nowhere to go. I was left just being where I was - talking, listening, engaging - but that engaging was cutting through me. I wanted to get up and leave. There was discomfort in my body and mind - scratching, itching, tension. With nowhere to turn to, I was left just being present to the feelings, to the experience. Breathing, allowing the felt experience to be there, not pushing it away. Just seeing it as not personal, passing through me, real and at the same time not real, holding that paradox.
Afterwards I found a safe and comfortable place to be, like resting after a period of strenuous activity, allowing body and mind to rest and settle. And next time that challenged comfort zone will be a little more familiar, probably still uncomfortable, perhaps still scary? For all of that though I can breathe into it again, let it pass through me, and learn that little bit more from the experience. For in all those scary, uncomfortable places there is also wisdom.
I was listening to an episode of the Metta Hour with Sharon Salzberg podcast yesterdday, and Sharon said something like (I’m paraphrasing),
…and there is the conflict in the world today, in fact what about the conflict that is within individuals…
Hearing that made me understand the often quoted,
World peace starts with inner peace,
in a whole new way. Yes there is conflict in this world right night, seemingly (from where I am sitting) everywhere I look, but what about the conflicts that I battle with within myself? And then the inner conflicts that everyone around me might have?
It can sound trite in a world of war and threatened authoritarianism, but by how much would the world be different if we each tried to fix our inner conflicts? If we held an awareness of how one’s conflicts can affect behaviour, and so not take the words of others so personally?
Sticking to the Meditation Instruction
Monday, November 20, 2023
I’ve said this before on this website, for example here and here. So why again? As much as anything, I repeat myself because I need to remind myself. There is something unintuitive about meditation. Meditation is a method for reprogramming our heart into different ways of being. We are swimming up stream, going against the flow. It’s hard work, and as such we might want to try and make things happen, force change.
Some days I wonder what I have achieved from my meditation practice? Sleepy, wandering mind, replaying that incident from yesterday.
Providing this does not become a habit as in, “great, it’s rest time,” I believe that what is gained is just showing up. There are so many other things that I (you) could be doing, and I decided to meditate. I am building a habit, building a muscle. So don’t become disillusioned if some sessions didn’t go as well as you hoped. You showed up.
I’m working on a blog post for those who are interested in meditation, but who struggle with it. While I don’t like to proselytize about meditation, I do believe that some people drop it because they approach the discipline with some unhelpful ideas and expectations, and that makes me sad.
Maybe a recalibrated approach might open up the possibilities provided by meditation, and yield results that initially weren’t apparent?
Tukdam: Remaining in Meditation At the Time of Death
Sunday, April 2, 2023
I recently watched the documentary Tukdam: Between Worlds. This explored the phenomenon in Tibetan Buddhism where experienced practitioners can remain in a state of meditation after the body has shown all physical signs of having died - no breathing, the heart has stopped. In this state the body can support itself, the skin looks healthy, there is no sign of decomposition of the body (even in the heat of India where many of the exiled Tibetan community now live), and a feeling of warmth remains around the heart.
March 2023 Photoblogging Challenge
Day 10: Ritual, suggested by @drewbelf
A daily ritual of meditation.
Just follow the instruction
Tuesday, November 29, 2022
I’ve written about this before in relation to meditation, and it has been prominent in my mind again. As such I felt like reflecting on what the message is that accompanies this instruction at this time. Goals With any given meditation instruction I find it is very easy to imagine where I should be on the completion of such practice - that is if completion is a thing with regard to meditation.
Currently reading: Practicing Peace in Times of War by Pema Chodron. Actually I have this book on regular reruns, picking it up and reading a few pages during my meditation practice. I need to be reminded of the material in this book. I need to be reminded that as much as I might complain about the actions of others, peace starts with softening the rigidity in my own heart. 📚
I love the expression (emphasis mine) that Thich Nhat Hanh used, in the quote below, to describe the dopamine effect that we feel when receiving a response through our devices.
We all crave connection, and many of us try to find it through our phones or e-mail. We feel a neurochemical sweetness when someone sends us a text or an e-mail, and we feel anxious when were not with our phones or near them.
I find something very compelling in this quote by Mingyur Rinpoche, that we can train our minds so that ”happiness will arise naturally.”
Our mind is very important and all our experiences of happiness and unhappiness arise in the mind. So if we can train our minds then happiness will arise naturally. This happiness is real lasting peace which you will have in the external environment as well as in your inner mind.
Meditation and the Spaciousness of the Mind
Friday, May 27, 2022
There is a wonderful description of meditation which describes the role that the mind’s innate spaciousness can play in meditation practice. I have read a couple of versions of this story, my retelling probably borrows from both. It goes something like this… Meditation is like trying to tame a wild horse. I could keep that horse in a small compound, giving it little room to move around in the hope that that will quieten it down.
The Early Bird Surfers - Reflections on Making Time
Thursday, April 21, 2022
A couple of weeks back I had an early morning Hawaiian Airlines flight to catch to Honolulu. In flight time the journey is a hop, skip and jump. Throw in airport time and it can take just as long as any long haul flight from parking the car to getting to the gate. And this was rush hour. For the flight that I was catching, to manage the commuter traffic a slightly larger aircraft is made available than the usual interisland airplane.
The aloneness of early morning.
Sitting and reflecting on what is important,
what resides in the heart , however deep
While the rest of the world sleeps.
Honey on a Razor's Edge
Saturday, March 12, 2022
Mindfulness is available to us at all times. I say that to myself - and then I forget. The opportunity is there, and then it is gone. Too late. Feels like too much effort. Or something puts in an appearance that has more icing on the top, or at least appears to and feels easier to consume - but ultimately leaves me with a sense of no satisfaction. The ship has sailed.
May Meditation Nudges - Full List
Tuesday, February 1, 2022
Through May 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, I offered a daily Meditation Nudge. This was a new article that I wrote each day through that month, with each one exploring an aspect of meditation. I have felt remiss to not have put together a comprehensive list of all of those posts, something that I believe would be a helpful resource. So now I am making good on this aspiration, and below is a list of all the Meditation Nudges that I offered during May 2020.
A Short Meditation to Start Your Day at Micro Camp
Wednesday, August 11, 2021
On both days of Micro Camp, before the presentations start, I will be leading a short meditation to help you quieten your mind and prepare for the day ahead. Just show up 15 minutes before the program for the days start. No experience is necessary to join the meditation. I have kept the instruction to a minimum in order to maximize the time that we have for meditation, so if you do come away with any questions, please contact me.
I was recently interviewed by Andy Mort for Episode 331 of his Gentle Rebel Podcast on the subject of Meditation. You can listen to our chat at the link above, or watch us on YouTube. Thank you to Andy for the invitation to the podcast. 🎙
Announcing a new, old podcast
Monday, January 11, 2021
It was early April 2017. I was sitting in an Airbnb in Portland, OR. My wife and I had returned to the city that had been our home for eight years, to sort out a storage room of our belongings, to decide what was going with us back to Maui and what we were going to sell. I had decided to start a podcast to help people start and build a meditation practice.
Heading out to a remote part of the West Mauis this afternoon to lead a meditation for a dear friend.
I sat in the car in a parking lot to do a short loving kindness meditation before heading home. Creating a pause in the day, and a softening of the heart. I did, however, forget the Book in the Car.
Book in the Car
Thursday, November 5, 2020
In my attempt to read more, I have put a book in the glove compartment of my car. I am not the fastest of readers, and find that I do not have a lot of time to read - perhaps a few pages before turning off the light at night. Other opportunities are grabbed here and there…and that was the motivation for the book in the glove compartment idea. No, I do not intend to read and drive.
I meditate not to escape the world, but to better show up in the world.
A Bird Flew Into A Window
Wednesday, September 16, 2020
Last weekend was one of unplugging and heading to the beautiful community of Hana on the eastarn edge of Maui. So isolated is the community, that at the height of the recent pandemic lockdown there was a road block established to prevent all but local residents from traveling out there, thus protecting their vulnerability. Along with my wife and a few friends, we spent the day at Hamoa Beach, enjoying its crystal clear waters.